


Timeless Tidings

by honestys_easy



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Shakespeare, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-11
Updated: 2007-11-11
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honestys_easy/pseuds/honestys_easy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A free afternoon late in the tour leaves Chris and Blake to reflect on Shakespeare, sweet potatoes, and each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Timeless Tidings

There are times when Chris thinks Blake Lewis is timeless. He’ll see him in the morning, sun drifting into the room in slits through the gauzy curtains lighting up his sleeping face, and Chris’s mind wanders into a half-dream, seeing Blake as an ancient Welsh warrior, or a scheming London vagabond making it by on his wits.

If Blake lived in any other time – in any time, Chris thought, and he thought about this on more than one occasion – he would ultimately be exactly what he is now, a musician. It was something that couldn’t be avoided; music is in Blake’s bones, it’s a rhythm flowing through his blood. Chris understood this, sees this every day when his lover’s face lights up when talking about a specific track or how easily the music comes to him, like it’s always been in existence and Blake is its vessel, making it known to the world.

It was a rare time on the bus, between the interviews and photo shoots and other necessities of celebrity that neither man really cared for. Chris was reclining against the squashy green couch, the one Chris didn’t even attempt to count how many times he and Blake got that close to fucking on before realizing there were three other people who would have to sit on it every day. Nor did he want to count how many times that fact didn’t stop them. Blake’s head rested in Chris’s lap, benign and oddly motionless, an hour of calm that both men were quickly coming to cherish. Blake had a book out in his hands but his eyes glazed over the words; Chris didn’t even pretend to be doing anything other than methodically running a hand through his boyfriend’s hair and counting Blake’s breaths like a metronome.

Chris’s mind wandered again and he was glad Blake didn’t see his faraway look, he’d be sure to poke fun. That damn Haley, she forced as many people as she could find to watch _Shakespeare In Love_ last night and now all Chris could think of was Blake in Elizabethan England, bawdy and rude as all hell but never sacrificing style while doing it. Blake would have been a musician in those days, too: a bard, a traveling minstrel, playing tunes strange and unknown to the world, sharing his stories and his creative work with all who crossed his path. He didn’t usually include himself in these musings, but he was aware of his own place in that time period, a world changing over to reason but still ultimately ruled by the sword. In that world, Chris thought he would most probably be a knight.

He could feel Blake’s eyes on him before he looked down and actually met them with his own: wide, amused eyes, eyes that glowed like sunshine flitting through chunks of amber. Blake’s book was discarded, dropped down to the floor and spread open like a paper butterfly opening its wings; Blake didn’t need to put on appearances with Chris. “What’s up?” he asked, the laziness of the day creeping into his voice.

“Just thinking,” Chris shrugged, already knowing that it wouldn’t be a sufficient answer for his boyfriend but he liked playing the game, the ruse that they ever hid anything from one another. Blake didn’t know yet about Chris’s thoughts on him through time, but only because he never asked, and Chris was never caught daydreaming before while Blake’s head was in his lap.

Blake chuckled and it vibrated all though his body, the younger man feeling it in his hips and at the tips of his fingers. “Don’t hurt yourself there, Mr. Jock,” he said playfully and received a soft shove at his head in response. Blake stopped laughing but the smile still lingered, a small curve of his lips that was always inviting Chris to taste them. He didn’t have to push the question further; he knew that if Chris wanted to give him that information he would, in time.

“You really want to know?” Chris asked, already knowing that Blake did. “I’m thinking about Shakespeare.” Chris gave no further explanation, and Blake scrunched up his nose at both the topic and the restrictive nature of his boyfriend’s answers.

Sighing heavily, Blake began a tentative drum with his fingers against the hem of his t-shirt; Chris trailed his free hand down the length of Blake’s arm until it reached those fingers, brushing against them but not attempting to stop their beat. “I’ll murder Haley for tricking me into breaking my ‘No Ben Affleck movies’ vow, I swear to it.” He did stop the drumming but only to twine his fingers together with Chris’s, thumb grazing against the skin in a slow, rhythmic motion. Just that soft touch, the tingle of electricity buzzing underneath his skin where Blake chose to make contact, caused a smile to spread across Chris’s face and warmth to spread in his chest. He wondered if this was what ol’ Willy S. felt like when he wrote about love.

“I’ve read some of his stuff,” Blake yawned, making a big spectacle out of it, opening his mouth up in a silent lion’s roar, pulling one arm up over his head and leaving it dangling across Chris’s thighs. His boyfriend looked down at the head in his lap, contemplating whether he should laugh or take the invitation and put that mouth to good use. “He’s definitely got some crazy shit…couldn’t get through half of the language, there’d only be 2 or 3 words I’d get per sentence. But I will give him something…his poetry had rhythm. He understood meter, he had that all down…he had a really great musical style.” Blake’s face grew animated when talking about the rhythm of Shakespeare, his eyes large, taking all of his words in as if he could see them in front of him. “Sometimes I thought about putting music to his stuff, a sonnet I really liked…but whatever I would come up with, it wouldn’t be his flow, you know?”

Chris loved watching Blake as he talked about music, even the musicality in the verses of a sonnet, and the soft, low hum of Blake’s voice reverberated through his bones. “It makes me wonder,” Blake continued, wistful smile playing on his lips as Chris gripped his hand tighter. “”If he had a collaborator. A musician somewhere, writing the score to all that writing, and it just never survived.” Blake shrugged his shoulders and shifted in Chris’s lap; Chris willed the ever-ready desire in his gut to subside, knowing he’d never hear the end of it if he got hard just from that casual contact and the sound of Blake’s voice.

The thought of a musician taking Shakespeare’s words and adding that much more beauty to them seeped into Chris’s musings. He now regretted thinking of himself as a knight and wished himself to be a poet instead.

Tapping a finger against Blake’s knuckles, grabbing his attention, Chris asked in a low voice, almost not to disturb the peace between them. “What’ve you been thinking about?”

Blake ignored the connection that only women asked that question, and usually right after sex – though Blake wouldn’t know from personal experience, no woman ever asked him that nor had sex with him – and answered in an even tone. “Turkey.”

The artful raise of one eyebrow told Blake that Chris was confused – well, that he was confused at the subject of thought but also that he’d learned to expect the odd and unexpected from his boyfriend’s head. “Turkey,” Chris repeated incredulously, his tone urging Blake to continue.

“What? My mom makes a great turkey. Always juicy. Apple-walnut stuffing.” Blake looked up, eyes meeting with Chris’s, whose were partially shielded by the brim of a baseball cap. “They’re giving me Thanksgiving off, thank God – get to sleep in, in my own bed, get to wake up to pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes…” He was salivating just from the thought: not just the prospect of the first home-cooked meal in two months, but the calm and warmth of home, of sitting down with family and fully enjoying a day without nagging calls from his agents or the shrill screams of twelve year olds in his ear.

The smile faded; but there might also be something else Blake would be missing in two months.

Almost as if Chris knew what Blake was thinking, what the frown that threatened their quiet afternoon together meant, the younger man pulled their entwined hands up to his face, his summer green eyes fluttering shut as he pressed his lips to each knuckle. “Thanksgiving,” he murmured against Blake’s hand, stilling his lips long enough for Blake to trace a finger along the crease. Chris flicked out a tongue against the fingertip, garnering a half-lustful sigh from his boyfriend. “Sounds nice.”

“I plan on it being a little more than nice,” quipped Blake. “I’m taking full advantage of a day off, I’m telling you right now.” Disentangling their hands with a soft, curious smile on his face, he traced the prickly, stubbled jawline of his boyfriend, feeling the contented sigh escape Chris’s body and all tensions pleasantly melting away. “I’ll wake up late, preferably after the clock says A.M., watch a bit of the parade and steal bites before dinner just to piss off my mom. Have a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, talk with family I haven’t seen since last Thanksgiving – and God, don’t even know when I’ll see them after that.”

Chris watched with shallow, understanding breaths as a faraway, wistful look passed over Blake’s face; he must have been thinking about past Thanksgivings, wonderful times sitting with family and loved ones around a golden turkey, roasted to perfection. He wanted to kiss Blake then, compelled to capture the beauty of his slightly parted lips and the golden-brown stare that almost looked through him, to a different place and time. But just as much as he didn’t want to disturb this, the quiet calm he found to rarely in his boyfriend’s eyes, the feeling that they both had to speak in whispers or it might all fade away.

“And then after three helpings of turkey and two helpings of pumpkin pie – don’t you look at me like that, Richie, you know I’m a growing boy –“ Chris gave him a surprised look at first, then laughed, the corners of his eyes creasing so deliciously Blake wanted to rise up and taste them. Chris patted Blake’s stomach playfully, letting the hand rest there and fidget with the hem of Blake’s shirt. “- I’m gonna sit in my favorite chair, zone out to _March of the Wooden Soldiers_ , probably pass out with a smile on my face.”

Blake’s voice grew softer then, his demeanor much different from before, Chris could almost feel it change in his touch. “And then my loving boyfriend would nudge me awake enough to get me up the stairs, making a completely stress-free day that much more perfect by falling asleep in his arms.”

He trailed his hand down from Chris’s cheek, past the collar of his t-shirt and up over his chest, resting just above his heart. “’Course, I’ll try to get into his pants because that would give me something to be really thankful for. But he’ll calmly remind me that I need to savor the time I have for a good night’s sleep, and that regardless we will still be in my parent’s house and my boyfriend is a bit of a screamer.”

The methodical toying with the hem of Blake’s shirt stilled; nearly everything just stopped short for Chris upon hearing Blake’s words, even his breathing. His heart was the only thing that kept its incessant beat – albeit a bit faster by now – and he felt Blake’s fingers dig deeper into the fabric of his shirt over his heart, felt the tiny pinch of Blake’s fingernails in his skin. A smile spread on Blake’s face and into the light in his eyes, knowing that this heart belonged to him.

When Chris finally found his voice, he wasn’t quite sure how to comment, how to clarify with Blake’s daydreams about Thanksgiving that the older man wanted him there, expected him there. Instead a weak protest escaped his mouth, for lack of his brain being able to compute anything more. “I don’t scream that much,” he managed.

Blake snickered, the golden hue in his eyes flickering playfully. “Who said I was talking about you?” he joked, grin so wide Chris could have called it adorable had Blake not previously banned the word from use unless describing kittens or a new pair of shoes.

The joke lowered Chris’s apprehensions and let the thought of Dinah Lewis’s Thanksgiving turkey sink into his psyche. “So you really want me there?” he asked as his fingers wandered underneath Blake’s shirt, brushing against soft, malleable flesh.

“Considering every time I’m away from you for more than a day I want to down a gallon of Edy’s and rip someone’s throat out…” Blake’s face grew serious, his eyes fluttering closed as he focused on Chris’s touch on his stomach, and imagined those fingers traveling elsewhere. “I want the Thanksgivings. I want the Christmases. Fuck Chris, I want to spend fucking Arbor Day with you. I want this time with you…I want every time with you.” When his eyes opened they were met with a field of summer green, a color natural only in his lover’s eyes. “That is…if you’ll come.”

This time it was Chris’s turn to smirk. “I never thought coming with you was an issue.”

“Dick. You know what I meant.” Blake frowned, hoping Chris wasn’t throwing his own humor back at him as a sign of polite rejection. “So what d’you say, Rich?” he asked hopefully. “Share in my dream? Autumn in Seattle, world-class turkey, a man that loves you possibly more than his own mother’s cooking…” His voice was barely above a whisper as he concluded. “I don’t really know what more you could ask for.”

Blake’s nervous tapping started again, this time against Chris’s chest, soft padding above his heart in tune with shallow breaths. Perhaps that was why Chris could imagine his boyfriend fitting in perfectly in any era, where his music would be strange and wonderful all at once and so very Blake. That beat of his, it reminded Chris of the first beats man ever created: the ones in imitation and reverence of the human heart. Chris always thought of Blake as timeless because of the hold he had on his heart.

“I can’t think of anything better,” he murmured, bowing his head down and smiling as Blake met him halfway for a kiss.


End file.
